


Happiness and Beauty

by mordredslullabies



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-06 07:05:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6744325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mordredslullabies/pseuds/mordredslullabies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after the events of The Raven King. Not spoiler free (obviously). Adam has a nightmare and calls his boyfriend Ronan up so he can feel okay again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happiness and Beauty

**Author's Note:**

> *Cringe in horror*  
> I feel like they are OOC and this is terrible work but I felt like I had to share. I wrote it not long after I finished the book and couldn't stop thinking about these two and I needed to write this. It took me forever to decide if I was actually going to post this or if it was going to sit in my folder for eternity. Sorry if this is horrible.

Close your eyes, deep breaths.

Nothing will ever be the same again. Your hands shake, breath quickens, the fear starts to set in. Then the anxiety, and the loneliness, that gut-wrenching feeling that you can never truly share yourself with another person.

It’s the hurt, the hurt that burns the most, that makes your heart bleed out in your chest. It’s the shock of how deep the hurt runs, how it fuses to your bones, a deep down ache that can’t ever be filled with time.

But you don’t deserve happiness, you tell yourself. You’ve been bred to think this your whole life. You are nothing but a weapon in the hands of a human; malleable, made to be used as seen fit. You’re not real. You’re nothing.

No. That’s not your life anymore. You are loved. You deserve happiness, freedom. You deserve the world. It’s okay to live in it. It’s okay.

 

Adam Parrish woke up trembling, his throat scratchy and his head pounding. He closed his eyes and breathed deep until the trembling subsided. He went into the kitchen of his tiny little apartment and poured tap water into a glass and gratefully gulped it down. Why did he keep having these dreams? What was the point anymore? He got away from Henrietta. He made his amends. He felt safe to return. Things were okay. He’d put the past behind him.

_You are nothing. You are unknowable._

_Not anymore._

He took another gulp of water and sighs, making his way back to his bedroom to check his phone. There was a snapchat or two from Blue, Gansey, and Henry. They were hiking some mountain halfway across the world, becoming one with nature. Adam had been one with nature, too literally, to have joined them, but seeing their happy faces, vibrant, _alive_ , made Adam miss them all the more at once. He missed his group. He missed Noah.

Adam scrolled through the names in his phone till he hit Ronan’s and pressed the call button. _Answer the phone, asshole._ He’d been better about answering it recently.

“Mmm,” a sleepy Ronan mumbled into the phone.

“Did I wake you?” Adam asked.

“Mmm,” Ronan confirmed.

“Sorry.” He wasn’t really sorry.

“S’all right. What did you need?”

“I had a bad dream. I know it’s not the same as night terror Greywaren shit, but…” Adam bit his lip. He shouldn’t have called. This was stupid.

“Your dad?” Ronan asked. There was a shuffling sound on the other end of the line.

“Kind of,” he said. “Just reliving things he told me. They’re hard not to believe.”

Ronan sighed. “I know. _Til fine versus_. Kay, babe?”

“ _Til fine versus_ ,” he repeated. “Sorry.”

“You don’t ever need to be sorry. Fuck, Adam, how many times do I call you freaking out over shit? Scared you don’t really want to be with me? Sad and upset about being an orphan? Worrying about Matthew or frustrated with Opal? You’re allowed to open up. Don’t be a fucking baby about it.”

Adam snorted. “Yeah, okay, asshole.”

Adam could practically feel Ronan’s snake-like grin from all the way in Virginia.

“How _is_ Opal?” he asked. Their dream-daughter-thing was always doing something new, discovering this world Ronan had taken her into.

Ronan groaned. “She literally drives me crazy. I can’t keep up with her. I’m too young to be the parent of a crazy dream kid.”

“Mmm. You pulled her out of Cabeswater.”

“That was an accident and you know it.”

“Okay.”

“When are you coming back here? I miss kissing you.”

Adam laughed. “Is that all you miss about me? My kissing ability?”

“Maybe,” Ronan huffed. “Kind of miss your face, too. And just being with you.”

Adam remembered back in Henrietta, after finding Glendower dead and Gansey died and Cabeswater sacrificed itself to bring Gansey back to life. After all that died down and there was nothing left, he and Ronan were faced with the daunting possibility of a looming graduation. Adam was not prepared to stay in Henrietta. Not even for a potential boyfriend. _I’m not asking you to stay_ , Ronan had said. _I’m asking you to come back_.

And he had. He’d come back multiple times to visit his boyfriend. Long distance was hard, but they made it work. Ronan understood. Adam had spent a lot of time mending burnt bridges in order to be less fearful about coming back to the home town that had broken him, ruined him in more ways than one. He was over it now. Everything was as it should be. Gansey was alive and Cabeswater was no longer in him and his father had graciously left him alone. There was nothing keeping him from coming back.

“I was gonna come down this Friday. My night class got cancelled and it seemed like the perfect opportunity.”

“Still can’t believe you’re taking a Friday night class. That’s someone’s idea of a cruel joke, Parrish.”

It was a class he really needed if he was going to go out and make something of himself. “I know. I’ll be there Friday afternoon.”

“I’m sure Opal will be thrilled. And all the deer. They miss you too.”

“I’m sure they do. Tell them I’m looking forward to seeing them.”

“You got class this morning?”

“Yeah, in a bit.”

“I’ll let you go then. Love you.”

“I love you too,” Adam said, still shocked that he could say the words, and more than that, that he could _mean it._ It was even further astounding that when Ronan says _I love you_ and means it with everything he has, because Ronan didn’t lie or play games with people, that he believed it. He didn’t know how Ronan, hard-headed, Irish spitfire, little shit with a beautiful heart and a sense of loyalty, _Ronan_ could love someone like him, but God help him, he believed the man. The man who was his beautiful boyfriend. His. For as long as he got to keep him.

He hung up the phone, feeling miles better than he had waking up from his dream. Dreams shouldn’t hold power over him any longer. His dreams were just that: dreams. He couldn’t make his dreams real. There was no power in the words, the memories. Adam was different now. It didn’t have to hold him back. He had college to look forward to, and a life with Ronan, and old friends that survive despite everything trying to change them. And not everyone he knew was human or normal, but that was the magic of being a Henrietta survivor. You learn that not everything is what it is, and not everything stays the same. He and his friends escaped. The darkness was over.

All that remained was happiness and beauty. And no more fear.

Adam was free.


End file.
